Quiet Neighborhood
The Associated Press reports on a very quiet neighbor: Woman’s dead body lies in flat for 35 years
ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Governments have changed. War erupted and ended. Neighbors had children, and then grandchildren. But Hedviga Golik never left her tiny apartment in Croatia’s capital — until her mummified body was carried out this week, 35 years after she died.
Police said Friday that no one ever reported Golik missing and no one has come to claim her body.
Residents of her loft building in downtown Zagreb had broken into Golik’s flat after deciding that the apartment should belong to them, and not to her. Startled by the remains in bed, they called police.
Forensics experts said Golik likely died in 1973, about the time a neighbor last saw her. Expert Davor Strinovic said she seemed to have died of natural causes, but “it’s almost impossible to say for certain” after so much time.
Given the general lack of housing in the Eastern Bloc, and the bureaucracy of the former Yugoslavia, it’s amazing that no one noticed. It’s possible that people assumed she went to Germany to work, as there were a lot of Serbian and Croatian “guest workers” at the time, but you would have thought someone would have checked on the apartment.
2 comments
Hmm… that woman was truly a flat liner.
They don’t mention how old she was when she died, but you would think that the last last neighbor who had seen her in 1973 would have mentioned to someone that she hadn’t been around for decades when it came time to assign apartments.